


Another Fine Mess

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Big Brothers, Brotherhood, Character Study, Gen, Little Brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-05
Updated: 2014-04-05
Packaged: 2018-01-18 07:42:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1420066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Character Study. Post-Appledor, pre-tarmac-plane-flying-away. </p><p>It seems to me both boys have some insecurity issues...and no matter how either is trying to make things work, the other's there messing it up out of some form of emotional idiocy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Fine Mess

“Well. That’s another fine mess you’ve got us into, Stanley,” Mycroft said, wearily, as he settled himself in the hard chair opposite Sherlock in the MI6 holding facility. He’d spent hours calming himself after the arrest at Appledor, determined not to add his own angst to a situation that was inherently too angsty to believe already.

Sherlock just studied him, eyes cold and flat and expressionless. He shrugged one shoulder, the ugly prison uniform, so much like hospital scrubs, rising stiffly at the gesture. “Us?”

“You don’t think I’m going to make you weather this alone, do you?” Mycroft said, honestly shocked. “Don’t be st—“

“Oh, much too late for that comment,” Sherlock drawled, viciously. “Been there, done that, have the t-shirt. Isn’t that the saying? It appears you were only too right in your childhood assessment of me. I really _am_ an idiot.”

“You’re nothing of the sort,” Mycroft growled, eyes narrow. He’d seen Sherlock in this state before—usually, though, under circumstances such that his next terror was that his brother would go racing out for more drugs, disappearing into the ugly underbelly of the city, where even Mycroft’s best people might never find him if he chose not to be found. “You’re among the most intelligent men on the planet.”

“Thus explaining my present circumstances,” Sherlock said.

“I’m sure you were…” Mycroft faltered, then. “I’m sure you believed you were expediting a desirable outcome,” he said, hesitantly.

“In other words, I meant well.” Sherlock grimaced. “A comment on my intentions, rather than on the brilliance with which I accomplished them.”

Both were silent, as in truth there was remarkably little brilliance to be found in anything at all leading up to Appledor, much less in the resolution of the entire mess.

“I can’t ask why you didn’t come to me for help,” Mycroft said, finally. “I made it quite clear I didn’t want you attempting this. I can’t blame you for excluding me.”

“Though I suspect you find it hard not to blame me for drugging you and stealing your laptop.”

“Mmmm. Well.” Again both were silent…Mycroft fighting back the acrid blend of fury and grief and hurt feelings that flooded up at the very thought of those betrayals.

“What…did you think you’d accomplish,” he said.

“Give you Appledor for Christmas,” Sherlock said. “Among…other things.”

“Other things you won’t tell me?”

“Other things I won’t tell you,” Sherlock confirmed.

“I know about Mary Watson,” Mycroft said, then.

Sherlock flinched. “Ah.”

“You didn’t really think I wouldn’t, did you?”

“I—believe I failed to consider that point.”

“Ah.” That, Mycroft thought forlornly, did at least explain somewhat. “Even if I hadn’t know—you didn’t need to protect her from me,” he said.

“No knowing where your loyalties lay,” Sherlock said. “You might have returned her to her American masters.”

“If I’d intended to do that, I’d have done it when she started work with John Watson.”

“You knew that far back.”

“For God’s sake, you didn’t even bother asking about him in all the time you were gone,” Mycroft snapped. “The only person even attempting to watch over the poor man was me… and Lestrade. I guarded him for two years—and you came back and expected to step in as though no time had passed. And expected nothing I did for him to even have happened, much less mattered.”

“He’s my friend,” Sherlock growled…with an unstated assertion that John Watson was no friend of Mycroft’s—or vice versa.

“John may not like me much,” Mycroft said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t respect him for what he is.”

The two glared at each other. Mycroft sighed. “This isn’t the time for this. I…don’t know how I’m going to manage to get you out of this, brother-mine.”

“Don’t.”

Mycroft’s eyes raged at his younger brother. “It’s treason and murder. The second no longer involves the death penalty. The first, however…”

Sherlock shrugged again. He folded those long musician’s hands on the table in front of him, and sat a-kilter on his hard chair, one leg crossing lazily over the other at the thigh—a twisting, casual posture that seemed to mock Mycroft’s upright stance and sober dismay. “So?”

“Sherlock…”

“Ah, right. Your heart will break.” Sherlock grimaced, mouth and nose twitching and crinkling, as they had when he’d been young and been served eggplant, which he’d loathed as a little boy. “You’ll just deal with it as you’ve dealt with any other ‘heartbreak.’ You’re good at solitude. Brother-mine.”

 _No,_ Mycroft thought, mournfully. _I’m really not. I missed you. I missed you when you screwed up your first round in the field, and I missed you when you started on the damned drugs and I missed you when you bonded to John Watson so hard you were able to ignore me entirely and I missed you for two years when you were gone and didn’t give a single apparent damn for Watson.  I missed you when you came back and ran right back into Watson’s arms in spite of his new love, in spite of his rightful hurt, in spite of his anger. I missed you when you married the man off—and left him behind and still never came to me._

_I’ve tried love. It didn’t work. I had thought brotherhood might, though._

_Apparently not. No lovers, no friends. No brother._

_Are the drugs and the dysfunctional friendships and even that stupid woman you got engaged to better than me?_

_Apparently so…_

“I’ll do what I can to work around it,” Mycroft said. “I may have to reroute you to that assignment in Eastern Europe first. I think I can talk them into that as an alternate to execution.”

“Lucky me,” Sherlock said. “Good thing I like sour cream and cabbage.”

“You hate sour cream and cabbage.”

“Good thing I’m only expected to live six months, then.”

“Sherlock….”

“Just think,” Sherlock said in mock cheerfulness. “Soon enough I’ll be gone, and the long nightmare will be over. No more liability. No more compensating for me. No more baby brother.”

“I never wanted that,” Mycroft said, frowning.

_He had truly, absolutely never wanted it. Oh, a few times as a teen he’d shouted it, much as any teen would with a brother poking into every corner of his life and trying to beat Mycroft by hook and by crook—mostly by crook. Sherlock had lied, misplaced blame, tattled, rummaged through Mycroft’s possessions, picked apart his life. Yes. Mycroft had teased and tormented back—and occasionally wished his little brother dead, for a value of death that mostly included the fictional wish he’d never had a baby brother to crawl all over him in the first place. But he’d never wanted Sherlock harmed—and he had thought years of action would have proven it long since._

_He watched Sherlock—that casual pose, that casual contempt. Blue eyes looking down his nose like a haughty Siamese cat._

_I thought you understood I love you, he thought._

_Apparently not._

“I’ll be working to get you out before six months are up,” he said.

“Don’t exert yourself too much,” Sherlock said. “We know how you feel about leg-work.”

_They had been the Holmes Boys, Mycroft thought. Paired, elder and younger, brilliant, private, so close that some people thought there was something a bit off there….not that there had been. But family came first, for Mycroft, when all was said and done. He fit so poorly outside family, as did Sherlock. He’d somehow assumed that regardless of lust and desire and social longing, there would always be fraternal love: kinship of body and soul and upbringing. Kinship of mind. Even…at one time he’d hoped kinship of calling, a time when he’d dreamed of himself and Sherlock as two halves of a single whole. The Holmes Brothers. England’s first, best hope._

_Apparently…_

_Not._

“Still,” he said. “I’ll be working at it. With luck…”

Sherlock gave him a tight smile. “Luck is like coincidence. The universe isn’t that lazy.”

“Neither am I,” Mycroft said. “So—maybe I’m your luck.”

Sherlock’s brows shot up, then dropped. “That would explain so much,” he said, bitterly.

Mycroft closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he stood. “I’ll be back when I have more information,” he said.

“I’ll be here,” Sherlock said, sour and stroppy and savage as ever.

“Do try to be,” Mycroft replied. “Trying to get you off if you manage an escape attempt would be beyond even my abilities.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

They looked at each other. Mycroft said, then, “What went wrong, Sherlock?”

Sherlock didn’t answer, and Mycroft nodded. “Very well, then.” He turned and walked to the door, tapping for the guard to let him out.

He didn’t hear Sherlock sigh, sadly, as the door closed behind him, “You loved me, brother-mine. Don’t you understand? I’m no good at it….”


End file.
